In the Realm of the Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

chair. When had arousal died? He thought back. It had been in Melega that he had first noticed it some fifteen years before. He had hired a whore, a buxom wench, but had been unable to perform despite all her expert ministrations.
    At last she had shrugged. “Dead birds cannot rise from the nest,” she had told him cruelly.
    Miriel returned, dressed now in gray leggings and a shirt of creamy white wool. “Is that more to your liking, sir tinker?”
    He forced a smile. “Everything about you, my dear, is to my liking. But naked you remind me of all that there once was. Can you understand that?”
    “Yes,” she said, but he knew she was humoring him. What did the young ever understand? Pulling a tall chair to the fireside, she reversed it and sat astride it opposite him, her elbows resting on the high back. “You mentioned some of the men who are hunting my father,” she said. “Can you tell me of them?”
    “They are all dangerous men, and there will be those among them I do not know. But I know Morak the Ventrian. He’s deadly, truly deadly. I believe he is insane.”
    “What weapons does he favor?” she asked.
    “Saber and knife, but he is a very skilled bowman. And he has great speed—like a striking snake. He’ll kill anyone: man, woman, child, babe in arms. He has a gift for death.”
    “What does he look like?”
    “Medium height, slim. He tends to wear green, and he has a ring of heavy gold set with a green stone. It matches his eyes, cold and hard.”
    “I will watch out for him.”
    “If you see him, kill him,” snapped Ralis. “But you won’t see him.”
    “You don’t think he’ll come here?”
    “That’s not what I said. You would both be best advised to leave here. Even Waylander cannot defeat all who are coming against him.”
    “Don’t underestimate him, tinker,” she warned.
    “I don’t,” he replied. “But I am an old man, and I know how time makes dotards of us all. Once I was young, fast, and strong. But slowly, like water eating at stone, time removes our speed and our strength. Waylander is not a young man. Those hunting him are in their prime.”
    She nodded and looked away. “So you advise us to run?”
    “Another place, under another name. Yes.”
    “Tell me of the others,” she said.
    And he did, relating all he had heard of Belash, Courail, Senta, and many more. She listened, mostly in silence but occasionally interrupting him with pertinent questions. At last satisfied that she had drained his knowledge, she stood.
    “I will prepare you some breakfast,” she said. “I think you have earned it.”
    “What did you gain from my stories?” he asked her.
    “It is important to know your enemy,” she answered him.
    “Only with knowledge can you ensure victory.”
    Ralis said nothing.
    Waylander sat quietly on the rough-hewn platform, high in the oak, staring out to the west, over the rolling plains toward the distant towers of Kasyra. Some four miles to his left he could see the Corn Road, a ribbon of a trail leading from the Sentran Plain south toward Drenan. There were few wagons now, the corn having been gathered and stored or shipped to markets in Mashrapur or Ventria. He saw several horsemen on the road, all riding toward Kasyra and the surrounding villages.
    A cool breeze rustled the leaves around him, and he settled back, his mind drifting through the libraries of memory, sifting, seeking. His early training as a soldier in the Sathuli Wars told him that a static enemy was one facing defeat. The forest and mountains of Skeln boasted many caves and hiding places, buta persistent enemy would find him, for a man had to hunt to eat, and in hunting he left tracks. No, the soldier he had been knew only one way to win—attack!
    But how? And where?
And against whom?
    The Blood Money had been placed in the Guild. Even if he were to find the man who had ordered the kill and slay him, the hunt would go on.
    The wind picked up, and Waylander pulled his fur-lined